April 2016 Poem A Day #14 Avoidance Syndrome

Temporary Avoidance Syndrome

Decades ago I sang in noisy bars
a couple times a month
four forty-minute sets
songs of my own construction.
Between sets, for
15 minutes, I'd hide
outside in the car
or in the restroom stall
to think or read a book
too shy too introverted
needing to gather
my strength
to navigate the next set
and during each song
break the social contract
take off the daily mask

Beginning 2 new paintings, then dropping the class

Started a painting class in January. I was full of hope and foolishness I guess, but I am a person of vague goals and missteps.  I lasted four classes followed by several weeks of being snowed out or in. During that time I started two large paintings which  are NOT finished and may look very different in years to come.

Once I got the second one going, it became obvious to me that getting two wet canvas back and forth twice a week in my little Fiesta was untenable. I can't leave them elsewhere because I am a slow painter and need to live with what I am working on.

So I withdrew. Heavy Sigh. I really like the old WCSU painting studio on White St. much better than the new one in the Visual and Performing Studio building which feels cramped and sterile. I do miss the advice of the instructor though Marjorie Portnow who is very helpful and I know I missed much by leaving. Besides the artistic feedback, she has a technical tips to offer. For example there is some use for Murphy's oil soap when brush cleaning, and that one tip has helped immensely.

The first canvas, at the right, is partially derivative from a portion of Seurat's The Circus, at least composition wise. I liked the grandstand lines and the bareback rider. It needed something so first there was a large clown to the right, then a ringmaster now a smaller running clown lower right which I really dislike as the body is awkwardly drawn for reasons of line rather than anatomy. And so the poor awkward clown may disappear.  (has disappeared and been replaced with a giant clown head) Again. Colors will change to, dots may reappear.

The second is above. It borrows the form of the grandstands but nothing else. Not sure where either is going. We shall see.

Hairs on Fire - with an oil pastel technique

From the archives:

HAIRS ON FIRE! Not really. This is an oil pastel I did while working in North Conway, New Hampshire.  I often find the faces of people I know creeping into my work. I guess because I have had to look at them and their features are familiar. In my mind there is some facial resemblance to a fellow named Burns who was a planner there. (It's not much of a likeness.)

One of my favorite things to do with oil pastels is to lay down thick color then draw back into it with some handy implement or other. Sometimes the first layer is scraped, then a second color is heavily applied and scraped into revealing some of the first color. When I took a drawing class at Western Connecticut State University, many years ago, I remember learning to draw into  heavy pencil marks with an eraser. This is where I got the idea of removing material as a way to form the picture. 

Post Script 10/19/2011 - One of the reasons I reposted this at this time is, I recently read how Jay Defeo formed The Rose using sharpened knives as much as brushes as she cut back into the layers of paint and scraped and hacked to remove material to form the topography of the painting. Very cool stuff.

Painting: Spacious No. 3: The Dry Lands

These mountains, rising in the distance under an expanse of sky, began their existence looking like scenery on the planet MARS. The underpainting I used for this oil-on-canvas-board scene was cadmium red.  You can see it clearly in the stage on the right. The main shapes of the mountains and the road line were immediately laid in with a soft cloth. I learned this technique when I went to a SCANart.org demonstration where a painter used it to build  a flower painting.  The red was hard to give up though, so this painting ended up as a Southwestern sort of scene.  I thought the colors were off, but a friend who'd lived out west told me this is how the mountains look at a certain time of year.  I'm not positive that I'm through with it.  I have terrible urges to add items to the foreground such as a rusty pickup, a gates, an oil derek, a wagon wheel, an OKeefe-eske skull, or an antique gas pump, or aburro, etc. etc - all the usual Western sterio-typical items. I am trying to resist this urge.

One thing I like about this painting is a funny effect the sky has in different light. Sometimes the clouds almost seem to have a depth, I think from the layering of blue and white that I used. Sometimes it looks like it must be raining over the mountains. Sometimes it looks like dusk, and there is a city on the other side of the mountains - giving off a glow.  It's quite odd. And I am not sure if I could reproduce it.

It occurs to me that I have not posted Spacious No 2, nor Spacious No 1 - so I guess I am ahead of myself somehow.

Talk about my process

ARTWORK:

This is a slide show of my weird art work - rough sketches or formal works, in a variety of media. I tell the original medium for each piece. MUSIC: The background music I improvised on a Yamaha keyboard, recorded on a tiny Olympus recorder. I also used that to record the talking track. I tried using the macbook mic in iMovie but the fan is running a lit and it gums up the sound.

One of my interests in creating visual art is in capturing or creating motion. You can see that in some of the pieces shown here.

 A sense of motion can be created in a number of ways:
** by the texture or vigor of mark, scrape or brush stroke
** the lines or the edges of the forms depicted
** by moving the eye with either the juxtaposition of light and dark or colors.
** Also by subject matter, ie bodies in motion. (though that in itself is not enough)

 I am not a purist when I work, I tend to make a mark on what I am working on using what ever is handy. I like working in oil pastels with water colors, but might also make marks with gesso or pencil or even ball-point pen or nail polish. I also am very fond of collage, if I have what I consider and unsuccessful composition, I might cut a particularly nice section out of it and glue it to another work.

Comments from the original post:

Process: Visual metaphor, psychological metaphor

This work is from the Maine years, most specifically from the year I lived in Brownfield, Maine. The face here belongs to a first cousin once removed, or my rendition of her. She is a beautiful woman, not that you can see that here. The wide open mouth pictured belongs to her mother, and I am not sure what the hell I meant by any of it. Seat of the pants metaphor, I guess. Nor do I recall exactly what I was thinking at the time. Except that the child was the  quiet one and the mom was very  talkative (though not particularly teary.) It is my probably mistaken impression of something hidden in them....

As to the content:

Unfortunately, this is one of those works where people look at me and offer their condolences on my suffering or inquire about possible substance abuse. Understand - I am always stone cold straight and sober when working, (and 99% of other times too) and I am NEVER suffering when I am making a picture. While picture making, I am totally unselfconsciously absorbed in what color should go where, if something is needed to balance something, how the eye travels around etc etc etc. This is also true of writing a poem, or an essay. Music and acting however, are more problematic for me psychologically. They cost something very personal to produce.

The medium here is oil pastel and watercolor on 18 x 24 inch paper. The combination is interesting because, the oil pastel will not absorb the watercolor, and the watercolors can be drawn over with the oil pastels.

- Mar  Walker